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GIS-based locational analysis of collection bins in municipal solid waste

management systems

Article  in  Journal of Environmental Engineering and Science · January 2008

DOI: 10.1139/S07-033

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 39

GIS-based locational analysis of collection bins in

municipal solid waste management systems
Ritesh Vijay, Ajay Gautam, Ajay Kalamdhad, Apurba Gupta, and Sukumar Devotta

Abstract: Solid waste management systems currently receive wide attention, from both economic and environmental plan-
ners, because of their complexity during coordination of various management strategies. The efficiency and cost effective-
ness of route optimization and disposal site selection depend largely upon the appropriate placement of storage bins and
their corresponding command area for waste contribution. The present paper illustrates a geographic information system
(GIS) based algorithm for optimal location and number of storage bins, considering p-median constrained model, based on
Indian guidelines for Municipal Solid Waste Rules. The algorithm also computes the contributing command area of solid
waste to a particular bin, based on the shortest distance, with descending slope for ease in solid waste collection.
Key words: municipal solid waste, bin location, command area, geographical information system (GIS).
Résumé : Les systèmes de gestion des déchets solides attirent présentement beaucoup l’attention des planificateurs écono-
miques et environnementaux en raison de leur complexité durant la coordination de diverses stratégies de gestion. L’effi-
cacité et la rentabilité de l’optimization de route et la sélection du site d’enfouissement dépendent en grande partie de
l’emplacement approprié des bacs de stockage et leur zone desservie correspondante pour la collecte de déchets. Le pré-
sent article présente un algorithme basé sur un système d’information géographique (SIG) utilisé pour déterminer l’empla-
cement et le nombre optimaux de bacs de stockage, compte tenu d’un modèle p-médian contraint, basé sur les directives
concernant la réglementation des déchets solides municipaux en Inde. L’algorithme calcule également la zone de collecte
de déchets solides desservie par un bac de stockage particulier en se basant sur la plus courte distance, avec une pente des-
cendante pour faciliter la collecte des déchets solides.
Mots-clés : déchets municipaux solides, emplacement des bacs, zone desservie, système d’information géographique.
[Traduit par la Rédaction]

Introduction The activities associated with solid waste management

can be classified into generation, storage, collection, proc-
Rapid increase in population and improvements in quality essing, transportation, and disposal (Tchobanoglous et al.
of life, especially in developing countries, have aggravated 1993). Fundamentally, the effectiveness of a solid waste
the problems of solid waste generation. It implies that the management system depends mostly upon the proper loca-
municipal authorities will require huge capital investments tion of bins, estimation of the waste generation and their
and operational strategies for collection, transportation, and on-site storage capacity. Amongst developing countries, the
disposal of solid waste. Delimiting factors such as limited Indian scenario reveals that (Bhide and Sundaresan 2001)
financial resources have made it imperative to replace the households are responsible for dumping waste into tempo-
existing ad hoc methods employed in solid waste manage- rary storage bins while as per Municipal Solid Waste Rules
ment and planning (MacDonald 1996; Chang and Wang (MSW 2000), municipal authorities in urban settlements are
1997). Most of the existing models for solid waste manage- responsible for organizing house-to-house collection of
ment are simple and seek optimum solutions, while only in a wastes. The municipal authority in general selects corners
few models, trade-off between the economic and environ- of the roads for the placement of the bins, according to their
mental objectives for integrated solid waste management convenience. The positions of the bins are changed fre-
system is considered (Chang et al. 1993; Nino and Baetz quently. Either due to remoteness or being extremely
1996; Harrison et al. 2001). densely populated, some of the locations are not properly or
adequately attended, resulting in more trips. According to
Received 5 December 2006. Revision accepted 1 June 2007. the Indian guidelines (CPHEEO 2000), the spacing between
Published on the NRC Research Press Web site at jees.nrc.ca on bins should not be more than 500 m and the maximum dis-
8 January 2008.
tance between collection points, i.e., households, and bin
R. Vijay,1 A. Gautam, A. Kalamdhad, A. Gupta, and should be 250 m. To achieve the best waste collection effi-
S. Devotta. National Environmental Engineering Research ciency, it is essential to find out the optimized locations and
Institute, Nehru Marg, Nagpur 440 020, MS, India. the number of bins to be placed. The majority of studies on
Written discussion of this article is welcomed and will be municipal solid waste management are focused on vehicular
received by the Editor until 31 May 2008. collection (Liebman et al. 1975; Male and Liebman 1978;
Shekdar et al. 1987; Lysgaard 1992), design of disposal sys-
1Corresponding author (e-mail: [email protected]). tem (Chiplunkar et al. 1981, Perlack and Willis 1985), GIS

J. Environ. Eng. Sci. 7: 39–43 (2008) doi:10.1139/S07-033 # 2008 NRC Canada

40 J. Environ. Eng. Sci. Vol. 7, 2008

based analysis for identifying optimal path of waste collec- Fig. 1 Flow chart for optimal location of storage bin and its com-
tion, transportation (Chang et al. 1997; Mohan and Sarasa- mand area.
vani 2002; Bothale et al. 2002) and landfill site selection
for disposal (Kao et al. 1997; Muttiah et al. 1996; Leao et
al. 2004), and uncertainty analysis in solid waste manage-
ment (Chang and Lin 1997; Chang and Wei 1999, 2000;
Chang and Chang 2001). Although these processes require
heavy vehicles and machineries, which are costly, the effi-
ciency depends upon the optimum number and appropriate
placement of storage bins as well as the quantity of waste
accumulated in them.
The present study was carried out, with the main objec-
tive of identifying the optimized location and appropriate
number of storage bins by p-median constraint model (Khu-
mawala 1973; Densham and Gerry 1992; Church and Soren-
sen 1994) on a GIS platform. Environmental System
Research Institute (ESRI 1994) Arc/Info program has been
incorporated in the present model operating on a Unix
Workstation. The optimized locations and number of storage
bins required are identified as per CPHEEO (2000) guide-
lines, using the location–allocation model, with the mini- bins and their command area. Figure 1 illustrates the data
mum distance constraint. If optimized locations of bins are interaction and processes involved in these two phases.
not acceptable due to aesthetic and environmental factors,
Phase I involves the preparations of thematic maps in-
the algorithm reruns effectively to satisfy the location and
cluding digitization, building coverages and databases.
number of bins, for newly or replaced position of bins. The
(1) Digitization of base map of the study area.
process involves the study of each element of triangulated
(2) Preparation of road network map, which covers all possi-
irregular network (TIN) generated using road elevations for
ble streets requiring services. An attribute of road class
command area computation. While deciding the command
and reduced level (RL) are added into corners of each
area of each bin for solid waste collection, minimum dis-
roads links or nodes, as per the survey map of the study
tance traveled by household to bin, with descending slope
area.
criteria, is used in the algorithm. Based on shortest distance
and slope criteria, additional weightage is given to each road Phase II involves the computations of GIS based pro-
link, for ease in transportation of solid waste loaded by carts grams for identification of optimized location and number
to reach the nearest bin. of bins along with their command area.
(1) Firstly, for a given road network, the nodes created at
the intersections of streets are assumed as the possible
Data requirement in GIS bin locations.
Detailed information of the collection area is required to (2) Slope of each road links is computed by RL assigned at
plan and manage the system. The following input data are corners of each road links.
required to compute optimized location and number of stor- (3) The p-median model identifies a p center to locate a bin
age bins. by minimizing total weighted distance from p center to
. Base map of the study area the demand nodes (ReVelle and Swain 1970). The waste
. Road network of the study area from every demand node travels to its closest bin. The
. Road elevation survey data bin is located at the weighted center where the majority
. Road class information of the demand nodes are converging with the weighting
The type of roads e.g., single lane, double lane or other criterion namely, minimum distance, both for downslope
roads, and their elevation are the governing factors for the or upslope (Hillsman 1984; Tewari and Jena 1987). The
location of storage bins, in accordance with the command p-median model with the present solid waste problem is
area, from where the waste is coming to a particular bin. solved with the following equation:
Hence, detailed information about existing road network is X
n X
m
essential, to identify the optimized placement of bins. ½1
Min Z ¼ wi dij xij
i¼1 j¼1

GIS based methodology where i is the location of the bin; j is the household lo-
The role of GIS is to handle various data streams and sup- cation; n is the number of bin locations; m is the number
port modeling analysis through various programs that act in- of household locations; wi is the weighting factor for de-
teractively. The GIS based methodology followed in the mand node i (slope criteria); dij is the shortest distance
present study consists of two phases. In phase I, the prepara- between bin location i and household location j; and xij
tion of thematic maps and attribute data required are at- is equal to 1, if bin location i is served by households
tached to the coverage in GIS. In phase II, computations are facility at site j, otherwise xij is equal to 0. Using p-med-
carried out, using GIS based Arc Macro Language (AML) ian constraint model, bins are identified in such a man-
algorithm (ESRI 1992), to identify the optimized location of ner that the spacing between them is not more than
# 2008 NRC Canada
Vijay et al. 41

Fig. 2 Base map of the study area. Fig. 3 TIN creation for command area of bins.

500 m and maximum distance between collection point Fig. 4 Location of bin and command area based on distance cri-
or household to the location of the bin is 250 m teria.
(CPHEEO manual). If the household location is upslope,
the individual road link follows the least distance criteria
to reach the bin.
(4) The info file of selected road nodes, assumed as possible
location of bins, is converted into a point coverage. Ad-
ditional queries of replacement, removal and addition of
bins have been incorporated in the methodology, for sol-
ving practical, aesthetic, and environmental problems.
After finishing all queries, as mentioned above, the final
point coverage is the optimal location and number of
municipal storage bins.
(5) The triangulated irregular network (TIN) is an alterna-
tive to the raster data model for representing continuous
surfaces that are highly variable and contain discontinu-
ities. The main components of a TIN are triangles,
nodes, and edges. Nodes are locations defined by x, y,
and z values, from which a TIN is constructed. In the
present study, TIN is created by joining all demand
nodes to estimate the command area for a particular bin.
Finally, the TIN model provides flexibility for analyzing
and displaying topological relationships.
(6) Areas having water bodies and barren lands, which do
not contribute to solid waste generation are deleted from
the study area.
(7) Input coverage, namely, road network and bin location is
superimposed on TIN to estimate the command area for
each bin.
based on nodes of road network, having elevation details.
All of the lake area was removed from TIN. Superimposi-
Results and discussion tion of road network and bins locations on TIN, illustrated
In the present study, an area about 4.0 km2 was consid- in Fig. 3, was used to estimate the corresponding command
ered as the study area, which included a lake (Fig. 2). Using area of bins.
the p-median (constrained) model, 49 locations were identi- The command area of a bin, contributing solid waste to
fied for bin locations. After solving all the queries, namely, that particular bin is computed considering the shortest dis-
addition, removal and replacement of bins due to practical tance and with descending slope criteria as shown in Fig. 4
and aesthetic problems, 46 locations were suitable for bin and Fig. 5, respectively. Node C in Fig. 4 may facilitate
placement. Triangulated irregular network was generated both the bin 3 and bin 4. The route from node C to bin 4
# 2008 NRC Canada
42 J. Environ. Eng. Sci. Vol. 7, 2008

Fig. 5 Command area of bin based on shortest distance and slope Fig. 6 Road network and optimal bin locations contributing its
criteria. command area.

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